was this woman that she made him react so?
She stared silently, an arrested expression on her face.
‘Is he someone you work with?’ The words shot out through gritted teeth.
She shook her head. ‘Don’t be absurd.’
There was nothing absurd about it. Working side by side led too easily to intimacy. He’d had to move his PA elsewhere after she’d mistaken their working relationship for something else. He’d lost count of the female employees and business associates who’d thought work the perfect way into his bed.
Silently he cursed himself for needing to know.
‘He’s married? Is that it?’
Carys stared into his glowering face and struggled against a sense of unreality. He looked genuinely perplexed. Deep grooves bracketed a mouth that morphed from sensual perfection into a wrathful line.
She shook her head as if to clear it. She mustn’t have heard right.
‘There is no man in my life.’ She hesitated, knowing a craven urge to avoid the truth. ‘I made that up so you’d leave me alone.’
Alessandro’s brow furrowed, his eyebrows disapproving black slashes that tilted down in the centre. And still he looked better than any man she knew.
‘Don’t deny it. Of course there’s a man.’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’ His refusal to accept her word reopened a wound that had never healed. He hadn’t believed her before. Why should things be different now? Her word wasn’t good enough.
Pain mixed with Carys’ fury. Her distress was all the more potent for having been suppressed so long.
‘Spare me the show of innocence,’ he sneered. ‘You didn’t get pregnant all by yourself. Or are you trying to tell me it was an immaculate conception?’
‘You bastard!’ Her arm shot out faster than thought. An instant later her hand snapped across his cheek as her fury finally boiled over.
Her palm tingled. Her whole arm trembled with the force of the slap. Her breath came in hard, shallow pants. She barely noticed the dangerous glint in his narrowing eyes or the way he loomed closer.
Then, out of the blue, the implication of his words sank in. Relief swamped her, making her shake as she sagged back in her seat.
He wasn’t here to take Leo away.
Hysterical laughter swelled inside at her stupidity. Alessandro didn’t want to take her boy. Of course he didn’t! He’d made his disinterest and disapproval clear from the start. He’d left her in no doubt both she and her baby weren’t good enough for him and his rarefied circle of moneyed friends.
Why had she thought he’d changed? Because part of her still foolishly ached to believe he was the fantasy man she’d fallen in love with?
Pain welled.
It felt as if Alessandro had taken her last precious fragment of hope and callously ground it underfoot, shattering a fragile part of her.
‘You really are some piece of work, Alessandro Mattani.’ Her voice was hoarse with distress, her throat raw with pain as if she’d swallowed broken glass. ‘I should have known you hadn’t changed.’
‘Me, change?’ Astonishment coloured his voice, at odds with his look of rigid control.
‘Yes, you. You coward.’ Carys pressed a palm to her stomach, trying to prevent the churn of nausea. ‘Even after all this time you refuse to acknowledge your own son.’
THE woman was mad.
Or conniving.
Alessandro met her glittering eyes, dark now as a thunder storm, and saw lightning flash.
Did she even notice that he’d grabbed her wrist and yanked it from his face? That he still held it in an implacable grip?
She didn’t seem to notice anything except her own fury.
His cheek burned from her slap and pride demanded instant retribution. No one, man or woman, insulted Alessandro Mattani.
Yet he held himself in check. He would not resort to violence against a woman.
More importantly, he needed to know what she was up to, this mad woman with the wild accusations and glorious eyes.
‘Don’t be absurd. I don’t have a child.’ That was one thing he’d never forget, no matter how severe his injuries.
Besides, he’d always taken care not to lay himself open to paternity claims. He enjoyed short-term liaisons, but that didn’t mean he took risks with his health or his family honour.
‘Spare me the act, Alessandro,’ she hissed. ‘Others might be impressed, but I’m not. I gave up being impressed the day I left you.’
He frowned as he felt tremors rack her body and her pulse catapult into overdrive.
‘You’re angry because our relationship ended?’
Women never liked knowing they held a temporary place in his life. Too often they set their sights on becoming the Contessa Mattani. But he had no illusions about matrimony. For him it would be a duty, to carry on the family name. A duty he was happy to postpone.
Her mouth opened in a short, humourless laugh. ‘I wouldn’t have stayed if you’d paid me,’ she spat out. ‘Not once I knew what you were really like.’
Such vehemence, such hatred, was new to Alessandro. The shock of it ran through him like a jolt of electricity. It felt as if he held a jumping live wire in his hand, liable to twist unpredictably at any moment and burn him to cinders.
She was unlike anything or anyone in his well-ordered life.
She fascinated him.
‘What’s this about a child?’ That sort of claim was one he would never take lightly.
Her mouth twisted in a grimace. ‘Forget it,’ she muttered, turning her head away. Her dismissive tone would anger a less controlled man.
Carys tried to tug her hand free, but he held her easily. He had no intention of letting her take another swipe at him. Swiftly he captured her other hand, holding both effortlessly till she gave up trying to escape and subsided, chest heaving, against the back of the seat.
‘I can hardly forget it.’ He pulled her hands, making her turn. Studiously he ignored the way her rapid breathing emphasised the swell of her breasts. ‘Tell me.’
Thick dark lashes rose to reveal silvery-blue eyes that flashed with repressed emotion. Her pulse pounded beneath his fingers and she swiped
